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Shooting grainy on-the-fly night photos doesn’t always yield the best results, but it’s done a great job of documenting this year’s Season of Light. I hope yours is as warm and bright as ours has been, and that you are surrounded by joy while the sun makes its way back to us.
Good Yule, and Merry Christmas.
I can hardly believe it, but I’ve now lived in the Pacific Northwest for seven years.
In that time I’ve done my very best to see as much of the region as possible, and document it all in my sketchbook.
So in honor of seven years, here are seven sketchbook drawings—
—presented in no particular order—
—of some of my very favorte places
and moments
in the place I now call home.
Holy cow—we made our Kickstarter goal three days early! I can’t tell you how much it means that you helped us reach our goal, and so quickly. This project has truly been a labor of love, and it feels so good to know that you support local and women-owned businesses like us.
Production is going to begin shortly and the coat will start being shipped in early fall, so I’m sure I will have updates to give you in the near future. In the meantime, there are still three days left of the campaign if you’re looking to get in on the coat and other rewards. And the Tacoma News Tribune did a great article about the women involved in the project in today’s paper—you can read about it here.
Thank you so much again for all your support and help spreading the word. We truly could not have done this without you, and we are so looking forward to the day when we can all wear our coats! Many, many thanks.
I have my tiny souvenir bottle of Mount Saint Helens ash sitting on my desk right now, as a reminder that it was thirty-five years ago today that the mountain erupted.
The event happened a year before I was born, so it’s not like I have personal memories of it—but Mt. St. Helens still crops up in my work now and again. It also shows up on the horizon from time to time—
—but not as frequently as you might think. It’s often in its own bank of clouds, so it’s not visible much, even when Mt. Rainier and the other volcanoes are out. In fact, I had never seen Mt. St. Helens up close (despite a few attempts) until ten days ago. With the anniversary of the eruption looming, I figured it was high time I remedied the situation. It just didn’t seem right that so far the only thing I’d seen in any detail was the gift shop.
Speaking of which… Normally I’d say that my sketchbook drawings are my best souvenirs, but I think in this case, there might be an exception:
Our “before and after” salt and pepper shakers, given to us by a geologist friend. I’m not gonna lie: there’s no way I could ever top these (er, no pun intended).
As another “souvenir” of today’s anniversary, I’ve got sketches of Mt. St. Helens from the past few years over on Drawn the Road Again. So go take a look—but head for high ground if you hear any rumbling!
I only have a few photos of Wayzgoose to show you this year, because just manning my table had me so busy that I barely made it outside all weekend. I think making it a two-day event gave us a record-breaking attendance, and the weather came through to allow the steamroller artists to shine.
So I’ll just leave you with a few snippets of the weekend’s highlights,
and hopefully tempt you to come and see us next year!
Many thanks to the fabulous artists and printers who make Wayzgoose the best arts event in Tacoma (not that I’m biased or anything…); to King’s Books and the Tacoma Arts Commission for making it possible; and to our founder Jessica Spring and her crew of volunteers for running a tight ship.
Most of all, thank you to the many hundreds of lovely Tacomans (and Seattleites! And Portlanders, too!) who come to show their support for what we do. My favorite part of Wayzgoose is how every year it reminds me just how much I love my city, and the people in it.
See you next year!
I don’t normally do the whole “Throwback Thursday” (#tbt) thing on social media, but I stumbled across a good one today. While digging through a still-unpacked moving box for something else, I came across these oldies. These hearken back to circa 2001, back when I went through a phase of doing my urban sketching in oil paints, in large hand-bound sketchbooks I made myself. I switched back to watercolor and pocket-sized sketchbooks for practical reasons, but it was fun to see my old stomping grounds in Boston and Providence again, through the eyes of a painter.
I took a rare day off on Friday, to get out of the studio and gather some inspiration in the…um..field.
My trip turned into a mini-adventure,
full of Washington wonders.
Catching the moonrise on my way home was an extra-special bonus, because it reminded me to set an alarm—
—so that I could catch a nice postscript to the day’s excitement.
One of the highlights of my recent trip was finally getting to see an illustration subject in person. Back when Jessica and I created our On a Mission Dead Feminist broadside a few years ago, we did a ton of research about San Antonio and the Alamo—but neither of us had ever actually been there in person. So you can imagine how much I geeked out when I visited the place—especially when I saw a plaque explaining how our girl Adina De Zavala is responsible for saving and preserving the place.
Here’s hoping there are many more Dead Feminist field trips in the future!
I just got back from over a month of traveling—first by way of a road trip to the bottom of California and back, and immediately afterward, a one-way Florida-to-Washington drive with a friend. In 33 days I logged well over 8,000 miles, and crossed several vastly different regions of the country. So even with the help of my trusty sketchbooks, my memories of the trip aren’t terribly linear. They’re more of a jumble of images flashing through my mind—so in that spirit, here is a similar jumble of images.
Now that I’m back in the studio, I’m trying hard to get my momentum back on my ongoing projects—and to suppress (for a little while, at least) the ideas that are coming as thick and fast as the images in my memory. We’ll see how long I last before some new project (or twelve) comes out of this trip…
Today is the beginning of the lunar new year, and you’ll have to forgive me, because I’m about to get cryptic. (Some day, I hope, I’ll explain.) For everyone out there who doesn’t happen to live in Tacoma: happy Year of the Sheep! You can stop reading now.
And for those Tacomans in the know: remember this image, and happy hunting!